Looking Down at the Scars that Remain
by Unstoppable Cyborg
Summary: After the Eternal Night, Mary and Darci are owed an explanation. No one expected the explaining to go this badly, though. Rated T for dissociation and panic/anxiety attacks. Takes place in an au where no one left for New Jersey.


**This may have been an excuse to practice writing in first person.**

**Thank you to Hagar on AO3 for coming up with the Tales of Arcadia Timeline; that helped me write this.**

**Title comes from "Paper Crown" by Alec Benjamin.**

**Darci uses they/them pronouns in this fic.**

**Trigger related spoiler for this fic: Dissociation sucks, my friends, and so do anxiety/panic attacks. If the POV character going through either of those affects you negatively then maybe don't read this fic (or do, I'm not your mom so I won't tell you what to do).**

* * *

I sat in Darci's room. I'd been here before, and not much had changed about their room since we were in middle school, though I could see that one of their Harry Potter posters has been replaced by the Papa Skull one I gave them for their birthday.

Unlike their room, us three inhabitants of it had changed. I'd changed the most, and Mary and Darci were expecting me to explain everything. I owed it to them. Jim, Toby, and I had been doing a lot of explaining, especially Toby and I because we were still human.

"What about those weird bugs?" Darci asked. "Was that troll-related?"

"No, I'm pretty sure that was Aja," Mary said.

"Mr. Strickler's a troll, though, so she might be one too!"

"Are you talking about the pixies?" I interjected. "And no, I saw Aja after all the familiars got rescued, she's got to be human."

Besides, I would have expected a different reaction to the massacre at the Janus Order had Aja been a changeling.

"Wait, fairies and pixies are real, too?" Mary asked.

"Fairies and pixies had a war, and the fairies lost," I said. "Pixies, though, they look like fireflies and can crawl inside your head to make you see your worst fears."

I pushed the thought of le Fay, the fairy, being more like a pixie away from myself.

"Remember how back in February everyone seemed to really trip out on hallucinogenic drugs?" I asked. My friends looked uncomfortable and nodded. "A troll assassin entered the school and released a bunch of pixies to act as a distraction. That way, he could corner Jim and try to get Jim to steal his soul back for him."

I should have never suggested that we keep Angor's soul away from him. That's an agony that...

No, I would still wish that fate upon _her._

"That would explain why they never figured out where the drugs came from," Darci said.

"What about when Señor Uhl ate Toby's breakfast burrito and was sick for most of the day? Was that secretly troll poison?" Mary asked.

"I mean, it _has_ given a troll the size of a volcanon GI issues, but that taco is entirely human-made. Toby just has a stronger stomach than our Spanish teacher. _Though_ a troll did attack our school that day." I looked away; it hadn't been that long since Draal died, but because of Gunmar taking him over it felt like longer.

"Was it the assassin?" Darci asked.

"No, it was another troll. He had been mind-controlled by Gunmar." I looked back at the two girls who had been my friends since we were kids. "Other than that, he was a friend."

Mary and Darci shared a glance as they realized that the troll I was talking about had died. They probably thought he died when Jim killed Gunmar, and they were only off by a couple days.

"Did he know how to use spray paint?" Mary asked in a softer voice.

I chuckled, pushing away my grief for now. "No, that was Steve. He and Eli were already trying to help from the sidelines."

"Like when Toby tried to kill our flour baby?" Darci asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Like then." Good, Toby had explained some stuff to his girlfriend. Maybe he had explained the whole double date that I didn't want to think about. Good for him, I'd have to stop by his house with tacos some time soon.

"Was you acting weird on the double date troll-related too, or was it just stress?" Darci asked.

Pressure wrapping around my skull, behind where my eyes were, was the only warning I had.

"Though I guess some of your stress has been troll-related lately," Darci said.

I had had an actual out-of-body experience. It wasn't this. The feeling of not being quite real was just as terrifying.

"As if getting sick right before finals wasn't enough," Mary commented. "The black blood was creepy." Her voice got slower with each word, like she was trying to figure out if something was off.

Everything was off.

This was real. This wasn't the Shadow Realm. This was real. _This was real._

Convincing myself was harder than it should have been.

I tried to count the amount of stuffed animals on Darci's bed to slow my rapid breathing, and it only helped somewhat.

"Claire?" Mary put a hand on my shoulder. It didn't startle me into a fight-or-flight mode, which was good. It didn't startle me back into a sense of reality, either.

"Are you okay? If you want to talk about something else, it's fine," Mary said. "We can talk about boys..." She trailed off, either remembering that my boyfriend wasn't human anymore or the fact that Darci asking about "my" behavior on our double date double date was what had set me off.

"Or we can go grab some chips from downstairs?" Darci asked, a mix of nervous and guilty.

I shook my head. "You know that staff I had?" My voice sounded so far away, like it was coming from something other than my body.

Darci and Mary nodded.

"The one you made portals with, right?" Mary asked.

"Yeah. The Monday after we had Saturday Detention, I made a giant portal. It was the biggest portal I've ever made. I nearly died, and my hair turned white. I thought that was the only lasting effect."

"Oh," Mary said, quietly enough that she wouldn't be interrupting. She had asked me why I had bleached my streak to white, and I had lied.

"I didn't think my getting sick had anything to do with the portal, even though it _started_ right after I made the portal. I still didn't think they were related when I started bleeding black; I just thought there was something weird going on. That there was another reason."

I turned to Darci. "When I ordered that steak, I didn't choose to order it that way."

They looked confused. I didn't want to say it, but I owed them an explanation.

"I... Toby and Jim said that you went to check on me after I went to the bathroom. Had you been a couple minutes earlier, you would've seen me get my soul ripped out of my body as a woman who called herself the Eldritch Queen forced her own soul into me."


End file.
